What is dead time in inverters and how does it affect performance?

Dead time is intentional delay between turning off one switch and turning on the complementary switch in a half-bridge, preventing shoot-through (simultaneous conduction). Typical values are 0.5-5 microseconds. Effects include: output voltage distortion (fundamental reduced, odd harmonics added), zero-crossing distortion (most visible at low frequency/low modulation), and nonlinear relationship between reference and output. Compensation techniques include: feed-forward compensation based on current polarity, dead-time compensation algorithms, and using smaller dead time with faster devices.